https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HAKCxH88RI

About the Area: Big Bear is known for its amazingly beautiful snowboarding & skiing resorts during the wintertime. In the summer, it’s known for its stunning hikes, mountain biking, and water sports on its lake. Stephen had never been to Big Bear, so with discount tickets in hand, we figured what better way to start off 2020 than a Big Bear couple’s snowboarding day trip!

Big Bear is also a great location for anyone traveling to So Cal. It’s only a few hours away from most of LA and San Diego! Plan a day trip, which is what we did to save some money, or stay for a week; there’s plenty to do in this adorable lakeside town! No matter how long you are there for, doing a couple’s Big Bear trip on a budget really comes down planning ahead.

COUPLE’S SNOWBOARDING ON SNOW SUMMIT

Getting Snowboarding Day Trip Lift Tickets:

We had done our research and found discount tickets through both Costco and REI. However, Costco comes in a 4-pack, so unless you want to invite some more friends or stay for more than 1 day, we’d recommend going to REI. If you are a co-op member (which is a $20 one-time purchase and a great investment for gear heads), we recommend purchasing these for a single-use day pass since it’s slightly cheaper. A note on the discount tickets, however, is that there ARE blackout dates. Before purchasing them, make sure to inquire when they are so you don’t find out after you have already planned your trip and bought your tickets.

Choosing Your Mountain:

Big Bear is awesome since there are two different options-Bear Mountain & Snow Summit. Snow Summit is definitely more beginner-friendly in terms of the difficulty of the routes it offers; however, there is a great variety of intermediate, black diamond, and double black diamond routes. Bear Mountain leans more toward the advanced skiers and snowboarders as the majority of the runs are black diamond ratings or higher.

Since it was Stephen’s third time snowboarding, we opted to try out Snow Summit! It had fantastic snow, wasn’t too crowded, and enough challenging difficulty so once we conquered the easier stuff we started moving up to the more difficult runs!

Renting Equipment for the Day

If you do not already own your own gear for skiing or snowboarding, we recommend renting. However, waiting to rent gear until you get to the bottom of Bear Mountain or Snow Summit can be madness. There are hoards of people waiting in line AND it’s much more expensive than almost all of the rental shops on Big Bear Lake Blvd. We HIGHLY recommend looking online and renting through a local ski and snowboard shop. For our couple’s trip, we used Blauer Board Shop and they were fantastic, fast, and less crowded. We booked the reservation online the day before, and everything was ready when we got up to the shop the next morning without any hassle.

Financing Your Couple’s Snowboarding Trip

If you are traveling to Big Bear, or on any trip in general, with your significant other, we recommend splitting the cost 50/50 and rotating what you pay for! For example, G paid for the Lift Tickets, Stephen got the gas, G got the Rentals, and Stephen got the food! Anytime we bought something we just used Venmo to request half from the other person. It keeps finances organized, up to date, and the day hassle-free! Make sure to be considerate of your partner’s budget by communicating before you leave for a trip!

The Snowboarding Itself

We had about 8-9 solid runs in before I, unfortunately, hurt my knee and we had to call it. Our favorite was probably Miracle Mile, a really nice intermediate route great for skiers and snowboarders of all abilities! The routes on the far left and right of the mountain were also really nice because the lines were shorter. Also, almost no one was on them since they had a bit more freestyle terrain! We enjoyed it because we could practice our jumps, turns, and technique. Overall, we definitely recommend checking out Snow Summit for a nice Big Bear Couple’s Snowboarding Day trip!